Ramallah/Gaza, (Samajweekly) Palestine holds Israel “fully and directly responsible” for the flaring violent tension with Palestinian military groups in the Gaza Strip, and warns that closure of the crossing points on the borders would lead to a severe humanitarian crisis.
Israel has closed the crossing points for commercial and humanitarian purposes on the borders of the Gaza Strip for five days following a flaring tit-for-tat fighting between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) militants, Xinhua news agency reported.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesman of the Palestinian presidency, said on Saturday that the Israeli government “has crossed all the red lines because it insists on carrying on with daily killing of the Palestinians and the destruction of their properties”.
A total of 33 Palestinians were killed and 147 were injured, including 48 children and 23 women, since the Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, said Ashraf Al-Qedra, the spokesman of the Health Ministry in Gaza.
“The Israeli closure deprived 432 patients of access to specialised hospitals in the West Bank and Jerusalem to receive treatment, which exacerbated the health status of these patients, all of whom have tumours or suffer from heart diseases,” he stressed.
The Health Ministry is still providing its services to all the wounded and sick and has made appeals to international medical and human rights institutions to put pressure on the Israeli authorities to facilitate the arrival of medical supplies to hospitals in the Gaza Strip, he added.
The Palestinian Energy and Natural Resources Authority in the Gaza Strip said in an official announcement that the energy deficit in the coastal enclave, home to more than 2.5 million Palestinians, “has reached 52 per cent.”
The statement said the power station would stop working completely on Monday due to the depletion of fuel if the crossing points are not reopened, which will affect the humanitarian and medical situation.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Ishtaye called on the UN to intervene to stop Israeli “crimes against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, whose victims are unarmed children and women”.
Abu Rudeineh said “the US bears responsibility for the deterioration of the situation as a result of the silence on the Israeli crimes and the lack of immediate intervention to stop them, which made Israel persist in its aggression against our people”.
